Just this once
by uzumaki rakku
Summary: AU setting, inspired by Tony Harrison's "Long Distance II". Once upon a time a boy lived happily with his parents in a comfortable house. Once upon a time a boy became an orphan and never saw his childhood home again. Kakashi is well aware of the pointlessness of his actions, yet picks up the phone despite himself — dialling that same old number, telling himself that same old lie.


**AU setting. An old draft I dug up. Written slightly more than a year ago... I wrote this after a particularly interesting poem came out for my lit test.**

**Extended author's note at the end, do read if you have time – there's quite a lot of interesting stuff in there. ^^;;**

**Inspired by Tony Harrison's poem, "Long Distance II".**

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Once upon a time a boy lived happily with his parents in a comfortable house.

Once upon a time a boy became an orphan and never saw his childhood home again.

_(But he could still call them.)_

_(But he could still pretend.)_

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_Just this once – that same old number, that same old lie._

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He was halfway through pressing the buttons when he realised just _what_ he was doing, and hung up.

Then stared at the phone for a few minutes, picked it up, and dialled that number he had so carefully memorized as a child.

The silver-haired teen placed the phone next to his ear and listened to the constant, long beeping.

Even if nobody would ever answer, he could still pretend.

_Just this once_.

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In those tumultuous years of growing up he picked up no bad habits – but for one.

_(He talked at ghosts and shadows and lies, for they never talked back.)_

_I didn't mean to,_ he thought over the same old sound of 'no answer', yet could not open his mouth to say it.

_I just wanted to call you..._

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_...Just this once,_ he told himself the same old lie, and picked up the phone.

_Beep... beep... beep... beep... beep..._

The sound had almost lulled him into sleep when there was a sudden _click_ sound, and he heard an emotionless voice on playback.

_'Sorry, the number you are calling is not responding. Please try again later, or leave a message after the beep.'_

And for the very first time he spoke into the microphone, hearing his own voice echo from the earpiece.

"My best friend died today," he said.

He hung up.

"It's my fault," he added, hearing his own voice echo in the empty room with the soft _pitter-patter_ of water droplets hitting the ground.

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One day he picked up the telephone, dialled that same old disconnected number, and heard a voice.

_'Sorry, the number you are calling is no longer in service. This is a recording. Please contact the operator if you require assistance.'_

Beep. Static. Loop. He blinked.

_'Sorry, the number you are calling is no longer in service. This is a recording. Please contact the operator if you require assistance.' _

Beep. Static. Loop.

_'Sorry, the number you are calling – '_ Click.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But the next day his hand reached for the phone again, with a feeling of helplessness he _hated_ but still held onto because...

Because what else was there – what else was there _left?_

And so he listened to the disinterested voice, the same old monotone reciting a generic apology for something that was nobody's fault.

Beep. Static. Loop.

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And one day he stopped.

He opened a little orange book, and tried to pretend it was enough.

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Years and years later he suddenly dialled that same old disconnected number again, because he could find no more things which were constant – not even in the most fleeting sense of the word – and heard a voice.

An answer.

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"...Hello? Um, who is this?"

The voice at the other end was young and unfamiliar and made him freeze in place, completely caught off-guard.

The young man – for the voice was male – on the other end of the phone waited for him to reply, but he could find no words to say.

"Ah..." the voice spoke and stopped, now hesitant and with a hint of... disappointment?

"Are you looking for someb—"

"Sorry," Kakashi said hurriedly, fumbling for an excuse – any excuse. "W-wrong number."

He hung up.

One moment later the phone rang, the loudness of it a shrill shock in the silence of his room. Kakashi reached for it, not knowing what else to do, and his hand jerked a little.

"Hi," came the same voice through the earpiece, with a firm stubbornness in its tone. "Can I, um, talk with you for a while?" The person on the other end seemed to take a deep breath, and started speaking at an extremely fast pace. " – 'Cause if you're calling at three in the morning – you woke me up, by the way, I was having a wonderful dream about ramen heaven... and after I got up I couldn't find a light switch so I tripped over a bolster thrice and stubbed my toe on some table, _oi _– so if you're calling at this kind of hour you either have something you want to say to someone, or you're drunk – and you don't _sound_ drunk, which means you probably have something on your mind, I guess."

A slightly awkward pause.

"And, well, nobody ever calls my number anyway. So it'd be, um, nice if you could humour me. Just for a little bit, y'know, just this once."

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**A match made in heaven – or rather, by the phone company. XD**

**I had a _really _hard time deciding on a title for this fic. When I dug out the draft it was titled _Same old, same old._ I eventually decided on _Just this once,_ but also considered _Calling Home _as a possible alternative. If I ever get around to writing a sequel for this, I guess I could use that as the title/chapter title, because Kakashi has been calling (and calling _for) _"home" the whole time, and now that he has unexpectedly found companionship he really _is _calling home, in a way.**

**And if I do write that expansion/sequel to this fic...**** perhaps Naruto would say that Kakashi has a nice voice, and Kakashi would be rather... amused/bemused (as well as embarrassed) by the awkwardly adorable compliment. XD And after that he'd suddenly go "ARGH WHY IS IT 6AM ALREADY CRAP I'M GOING TO BE LATE TALK TO YOU LATER I'LL CALL BACK! AND IF YOU DON'T PICK UP I'M GONNA STALK ALL THE WAY TO YOUR HOME AND BANG YOUR DOOR DOWN BECAUSE... GAH, JUST BECAUSE! OKAY BYE! THANKS FOR TALKING!" ...or something like that.**

**There's also some backstory for Naruto which I could expand on, of course. You can see a bit of it in "Nobody ever calls my number anyway."** **There's this image of lonely-university-student!Naruto living alone in an apartment and walking past an old empty house on his way to classes (because he doesn't actually _live _in Kakashi's childhood home, the phone company just reassigned the number to another residence in the area after many years had gone by).**

**But I really have _way _too many AUs in my head already... such as the music AU, the online romance AU which I've only discussed (extensively) with one person so far, and a vague idea for something half-based off Natsume Yuujinchou.**

**But anyway. I hope you liked this fic! ^^;; There's this sense of lingering sadness which pervades, but something changes at the end where Naruto crops up out of nowhere and suddenly displaces the loneliness of Kakashi's same old empty routine. As a friend put it, "Naruto will probably sound very bright and young and shocking. Like dusting cobwebs off Kakashi who's going through the same motions and remembering past."**

**Random note: an older, alternative version of this story – because this is a _really _old draft – was broken down into five parts. The mini-title of each part started with "Same old." for part 1 and keeps repeating with each sequel until "Same old, same old, same old, same old...?" finally comes to an end in the final part, "Answer." **

**Because Kakashi has been silently asking something the whole time, and Naruto doesn't just tell him or give him what he's looking for – he _is _the answer.**

**Someone once said that _"Just this once,"_ the phrase which keeps repeating, could eventually become their way of saying "Until again."**

**I think I like that. (:**


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